This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Fresno Bee Guild president explains the value of a newspaper union

Some of you may wonder why we need a guild. The recent vote between furloughs or vacation burndown helps provide an answer.

The initial proposal from the company offered the burndown, but no guarantee that furloughs would not occur, and it was vague on whether we would have to continue burning down vacation beyond2010.

So, the guild voted “no” and the company came back with a better deal for the newsroom staff: guaranteeing that no furloughs would occur without our approval (which would be requested only if the financialsituation deteriorated severely) and imposing the burndown only through next year.

That said, you will want to be heard next year because 2010 is going to be interesting.

Consider this: we have elections for officers coming up at the end of the year; we have a contract that expires in 2010; and we will likely have to address the vacation burndown issue again because the current agreement with management expires at the end of next year.

We don’t know yet what management will propose at contract time, but recent happenings in Modesto could give us a clue. There, the company said it wanted to reduce severance payments from 40 weeks to 26. Be prepared to deal with the same here.

4 comments:

Sandy's a good guy and all but that Guild is really weak. My understanding was that they could count their voting members on one hand. There's no benefit to joining the Guild, since non-members get the same benefits and treatment as members. Save the money on dues and it doesn't matter.

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